"We can see indicators of collapsing US hegemony long before this period. The intervention in Kosovo was a key moment... That's when the US uses NATO as a surrogate for the UN." - Juliano Fiori @alameda.institute

Imagine the VAR chat if it was widely believed that the intensity of territorial disputes is downstream from football results.

"Many of us in the labor movement have felt strongly that more of our [political] leaders should be labor union members, should be organisers, and that that's an important part of a vision for doing politics differently." - @lizafeatherstone.bsky.social on the New York Primaries:

You almost wish there had been some sort of a major health event in recent years - one that would have provided the absolutely perfect opportunity to retrofit our schools and improve ventilation systems.

"There's a recent study by the University of Colorado looking at global media coverage of the climate crisis. And they found that in the five years since 2021, it's dropped by over a third and actually closer to 40%." - @adriennebuller.bsky.social, editor of @the-breakdown.bsky.social

"We have infrastructural systems that are built for a completely different era... that are just radically ill equipped for the world that we now live in." - @adriennebuller.bsky.social of @the-breakdown.bsky.social on the politics of heatwaves:

Daniel Trilling on how it's a mistake to think that in places where Reform (and other far-right groups) are doing well, that they represent the majority. And that a task for the metropolitan left is to build solidarity with people in such places who also oppose the far-right:

The policies contained in the 2010 manifesto of the British National Party - once considered fringe and extreme - have now been mainstreamed by both Reform and the traditional British establishment argues @trillingual.bsky.social:

The relative (though highly unstable) thaw in the US-China relationship is partly due to China's success in facing down the Trump administration during last year's tariff war which forced Trump to see China as a true peer of the United States, argues @tobitac.bsky.social

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop."

"I don't take the state as a brute datum, a given of the world system..." - @leninology.bsky.social on what the realist school of international relations misses:

"It's absolutely the Israeli objective with these evacuation orders to heighten domestic unrest and civil tension." - @ngeorge00.bsky.social on Israel's long-standing project of deliberately fostering sectarianism within Lebanon:

'The United Nations and other observers recorded about 15,000 Israeli violations violations of the ceasefire in Lebanon... 400 people were killed...' - @ngeorge00.bsky.social on the one-sided "ceasefire" that preceded the latest round of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah:

"Much like the guff about Keir Starmer being a thoroughly decent man, you really have to wonder at the strategic blind spots and the implicit value judgments of anyone describing Peter Mandelson as charming." - @leninology.bsky.social

"If McSweeney has a genuine talent, it's as a con man. Because McSweeney and mates couldn't resist telling all and sundry about how clever he was, we know he ran Labour Together as a Janus-faced operation..." - @philbc3.bsky.social

"NATO is over. The US empire is in a process of irreversible decay... A new set of alliances is going to be necessary. It would be necessary for a left-wing government representing working class interests. It's necessary probably for the bourgeoisie..." - @leninology.bsky.social

We've all heard of 'buying the dip' but this is ridiculous.

Bringing the corrupt sociopath onboard as a way to say fuck you to the left (and most Labour Party members).

I'm fine with puffers - just think people are choosing bad ones in dreary colours (agree with the comments about the annoying ubiquity of black clothing). I have a burnt orange one a bit like this:

"Obama helped to put what was still in some ways a fledgling agency (ICE) and built it up into the institutional node that it is now. Obama is extremely important as a fulcrum between the origins of Homeland Security... and its hypertrophy and abuse in Trump." - Nikhil Pal Singh

"Increasingly the distinction between the foreign and the domestic, doesn't really hold up... We have something like military action in US cities to round up immigrants, and then we have a kind of police action to kidnap or arrest a foreign head of state..." - Nikhil Pal Singh

"The US labour movement often has been guilty of assuming that immigrant workers are unorganisable... Actually the immigrant worker organisations have been the ones leading the labour movement..." - @sarahljaffe.bsky.social

"The EU, even if it wasn't utterly pusillanimous on Greenland, and ambiguously satisfied with the outcome in Venezuela... It just doesn't have the political resources to form an independent military pole." - @leninology.bsky.social

"[the attack on Venezuela] was partly about Trump's penchant for spectacular acts of violent sovereignty, that defy inherited norms and that put the world on notice... We stand for raw, unvarnished power." - @leninology.bsky.social

From the latest episode - @sabrinafernandes.com on the "class conciliation" politics of Lula and the PT - that sees Brazil's domestic capitalist class as genuinely concerned with the well-being of the nation:

"This was the excuse coming from the COP30 presidency: 'We invited a lot of people from the private sector, but we also had record numbers of indigenous people attending...' But what kind of inclusion is that?" - @sabrinafernandes.com on the presence of industry lobbyists at #COP30.

Finally getting pitches from truly top-tier guests...